


The Most Human Color

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Nudity, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4054915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider is a wall of mirrored lenses and tight smirks and ironic tilts of the head. He does not look at you with blasted, vulnerable shock, he does not have windows to his soul. </p>
<p>(Karkat walks in on Dave naked, shades and all.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Human Color

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a quick thing I posted on tumblr, but I liked it a lot, so I cleaned it up a bit.

“Hey, Strider, have you seen my husktop charger? I think I left it in here…last…night…” Your statement tunnel closes down on you, squeaking on the last few words. **  
**

Dave’s mouth drops open and nothing comes out of it. He is staring right at you, and he’s got to be engaging in some Time Weirdness, because you are fucking frozen to the spot. You follow Dave’s gaze (Dave doesn’t  _have_ a gaze, goddammit) to the table beside the recuperation platform, where his shades sit, half-open, one arm reaching for a rescuer.

Dave’s eyes are magma-red and long-lashed and stupidly pretty and they don’t  _belong_  on his face. Dave Strider is a wall of mirrored lenses and tight smirks and ironic tilts of the head. You’ve learned to read his moods from the tension in his back and the twitching of his fingers, how long he pauses between words. Dave Strider does not look at you with blasted, vulnerable shock, he does not have windows to his soul. He is never this naked.

But no, okay, he is  _totally_  naked. He must have just gotten out the ablution trap, his hair slicked back from his forehead, drops running down the sides of his neck. He’s looks so wrong, so alien, like whoever put his body together had no idea what they were doing, muscles and bones in the wrong places. His bulge is scrawny and weird and unsheathed (doesn’t even have a sheath) and the same color as the rest of him. This is the first totally nude person you’ve ever seen and there is a whole lot to look at, but his eyes are what get you, make your skin go hot-cold all over, embarrassment coiling tight with arousal in your gastric sack.

You both move at the same time, you shuffling forward out of the doorway, and Dave covering his eyes with his hand and throwing himself across the platform. His wrinkly human bulge bounces pathetically.

“Fucking Christ, Karkat! Is knocking another thing you trolls of high culture don’t fucking do? Too goddamn pedestrian?” he babbles. “Privacy’s for plebes?”

“The door was open, douchecanoe!” you shout back, though that’s not strictly true. It’d been open a crack, like Dave had meant to close it but hadn’t kicked quite hard enough.

You get there first, since you don’t have a shit-ton of blankets to writhe across. For one of the dumbest split-seconds of your life, you consider holding the shades out of reach.  _Come get them, asshole!_ But that really would get you time-smacked. It’s easy to forget now that you’re bros, but Dave is god tier, which means he’s catastrophically stronger than you. He’d fly right up your ass to get his shades back.

Still…you don’t want to be done looking. Dave is kneeling on the recuperation platform, knees spread wide for balance, flushed all the way down his chest, gaze incendiary. You've seen enough human movies to know that human eyes aren't like this. They're mostly brown, sometimes green or blue. You wonder if this is why Dave hides them. If other humans had found out, would he have been hunted? Culled? His home planet is space-dust, but survival habits don't ever really go away. You still can't bring yourself to type in anything but grey. 

You blame the sudden rush of kinship for your impulse to lean in and kiss him on his weird pink mouth.  

Dave holds out a hand, and you deposit the shades in them. He shoves them back onto his face and only then does he bother to drag a sheet over his junk. You’re still staring at him, but there’s no way to tell where he’s looking anymore.

“I don’t have your fucking husktop charger,” he says. “Check the lab. Maybe Rose knows where it is.” His voice hoarse but level, tension bleeding out of him now that his eyes are covered again, all that raw emotion gone like you’d just imagined it.

“Uh, right,” you say. “Sorry about, uh–.” You gesture vaguely to pretty much every part of his body.

“No fear,” he says, in that insufferable Cool Guy tone he hasn’t bothered to use on you in months. “Shit happens. Next time knock, asshole.”

“Fuck you sideways,” you say out of reflex, but you head for the door. He is still kneeling on the recuperation platform, dripping and shivering, and there’s a distant yet very real part of you that doesn’t want to leave him like this. But seriously, what else can you do?

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Regina Spektor's "Blue Lips", although I took liberties with what the most human color is. 
> 
> autoeuphoric on tumblr!


End file.
